{"id":309,"date":"2008-12-31T20:02:31","date_gmt":"2009-01-01T01:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lettersandsodas.com\/books\/?p=309"},"modified":"2008-12-31T20:02:31","modified_gmt":"2009-01-01T01:02:31","slug":"reading-plans-or-a-lack-thereof-and-what-i-read-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/reading-plans-or-a-lack-thereof-and-what-i-read-this-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading plans, or a lack thereof, and what I read this year"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I had lunch with someone at work who asked what I was reading, and what I was going to read next. When I said I wasn’t sure what would be next, he seemed surprised. I do have a mile-long list—actually, several lists. I keep one in a private wiki, divided up into adult fiction\/adult nonfiction\/cookbooks\/kids’ books\/YA books, plus a few themed or source-specific mini-lists, e.g. “from the Princeton Architectural Press Autumn 2005\/Winter 2006 catalog” or “cited in Paris to the Moon<\/em> by Adam Gopnik.” I also have a set of private Delicious bookmarks, and a written-down list in the back of my planner, in no order at all. So I have these lists of books I’ve heard of from various places—book blogs, reviews in The New Yorker<\/em>, reviews in Publishers Weekly<\/em>, books that friends have mentioned, books mentioned in other books I’ve been reading … and then I have a stack of books on my desk, plus shelves of books that I own but haven’t read yet, or that I own and think I’d like to re-read, books I’ve bought and books I’ve been given and books that have been loaned to me and books I’ve found on the sidewalk. But I don’t make any definite plans until I’ve finished one book and it’s time to actually physically pick up the next one. Often it’s a matter of chance, or maybe, better, serendipity: of the books I read in December, three I saw at the library without having heard of them before, one was on my to-read list and got read when it did because I saw it at the library and checked it out, and the other had been recommended to me by a friend back in, oh, January, and I finally got around to reading it (and of course, that was the one I loved best.) Sometimes I’ll know I’m in the mood for a kids’ book, or for poems, or a great big long novel, but often I’m just in the mood for something good, no genre in particular.<\/p>\n

I don’t have very specific reading plans for the new year, other than to carry on reading Proust, slowly, mixed up with whatever poems and novels and non-fiction books catch my eye and spark my interest. I want to read some more of the books I own—and to give away some books after I’ve read them, especially if they’re books I’ve found on the sidewalk in the first place.<\/p>\n

And for an end of year summary: this year I read 37 books, categorized as below:
\nGraphic novels: 1
\nBooks of poems (including a YA poetry memoir, which I am also counting as YA): 10
\nAdult fiction (novels or short stories): 11
\nAdult nonfiction: 5
\nKids’ books\/YA books: 11
\nBooks translated from languages other than English: 8<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I had lunch with someone at work who asked what I was reading, and what I was going to read next. When I said I wasn’t sure what would be next, he seemed surprised. I do have a mile-long list—actually, several lists. I keep one in a private wiki, divided up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-generalmeta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}